Which is why electoral reform is my pet political issue. Shame it doesn't get more attention.
What Kor said. This SHOULD be the time of the independents. It's PITIFUL how people will vote for a candidate simply because their party tells them to. What happened to free will?
It's not that I'm surprised by this, just pissed off. I think we all agree that both parties are full of graft and corruption. We badly need to shake up the system and bring in more parties.
Admittedly, with this state of political discourse in America, it's a natural reaction to claim the two-party system as the root of all corruption. But I am somewhat puzzled by the critic's gospel, implicit or otherwise, that 'independent' candidates will lift America from its electoral ignorance and usher in a state of perfect, ideal politics.
The two-party system developed for many reasons. Patronage, corruption, entrenchment of power and other such vicious cycles are certainly among them. But perhaps the two parties exist because this is all America can easily comprehend. We complain that there are so many stupid people that tacitly agree to this corrupt system; it is those people, too, that make an independent system infeasible. With many independent candidates comes a hyperpluralistic election, a chaos of ideas that (with great help from the massive media filter) must be parsed by individuals. And what can they do to handle this? They simplify, categorize, put things into neat tables and charts. Liberal, conservative, whatever label you wish. This is the natural tendency of Americans; to think that better education and better example would change their nature is respectable, but naive. The equilibrium state of America is a system of two, maybe three, parties. "Shake up" the system and you will create temporary discord, and then the system will become a party system though perhaps under a new veneer of "independence" masquerading the parties as decisions of enlightened individuals. And nevermind the assumption, again naive, that politicians would participate correctly in this pluralistic discourse - many independents would only multiply the probability of attack politics, of corruption, of twisting words. But on that point I'd prefer not to argue, so to move on:
What the two party system, flawed as it is, can offer is a limited, incremental change in whatever direction the electoral system dictates. Policy shifts, leadership changes hands, but in large part the society and government remains unchanged. THAT is a founding principle of our government, and of our bureaucracy - that change should be possible, but always calm. To quote Edmund Burke's
Reflections on the Revolution in France:
"This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, on the spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great occasions."
We, seeing the failures of the status quo, call for independent participation; but they would break the incrementalism that allows society while the populace remains largely amenable to their current situation. In short, we don't want change, we don't want diverse voices to echo in our heads calling for this change and that upheaval. We are, inevitably, creatures of simple habit, not creatures of political perfection. It would be wonderful to have a diverse discourse, but given the size and composition of our people, a "dull sluggish race, rendered passive by finding our situtation tolerable [...] and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its full perfection" to quote Burke again, it only detracts from what little progress we can manage to make such complaints.
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